Lecture on influential Offaly-born historian

A lecture on a globally influential Offaly-born historian will take place in Tullamore on Monday.

The Offaly History lecture on 'David B. Quinn: A Clara born ‘Third Revolutionary’' will be delivered by Neasa MacErlean on Monday, October 19, at 7.30pm at Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore. All are welcome. Non-members admission €5 including tea after the lecture.

Neasa MacErlean is a journalist, formerly of The Observer (in London) and The Irish Press. She is the author of 'Telling the Truth is Dangerous' — how a group of young historians (including David Quinn and Robert Dudley Edwards) changed the study of Irish history in the last century. Her book was published in 2025. Robert Dudley Edwards was her grandfather.

Her talk will focus on the ‘scientific revolution’ in Irish history.

It is generally seen as the brainchild of two professors but, in fact, there were three. David Beers Quinn was the third who, with Robert Dudley Edwards of UCD and Theo Moody of Trinity, established the professional basis for the study of the subject which remains in place today.

Neasa MacErlean writes: "It might not be long before many of us are discussing the comparative strengths of land and sea powers — or, to be more specific, China, Russia and Iran against the US and UK. Like Roman gladiators, they have different sets of weapons — tanks and soldiers, in particular, against ships and submarines. There is a particular reason to be interested in this subject in County Offaly — the birthplace and early home of one of the most insightful and original historians of this distinction.

"David Beers Quinn, born in Clara in 1909, felt this contrast under his feet in his formative stages — passing his first 13 years on the Goodbody estate and then moving in 1922 to the port of Belfast, birthplace of great ocean liners. Quinn was courageous in taking a decision as a professional historian to move away from the standard template of state history. Instead of writing history about Britain or the US, he decided to research the connections between them, developing what has now become known as ‘Atlantic History’. As I will explain in more detail in a talk to the Offaly History Society on 19 October, he told a fellow historian — my grandfather, Robert Dudley Edwards — that he planned to write a book ‘on all the voyages from Columbus’. In this way, he explained how Tudor England transitioned into a great sea power as it crossed the ocean to America. More vulnerable in land battles, however, it often suffered horrific defeat in clashes with indigenous Americans," she says.

Although Dudley Edwards described Quinn’s contribution to the history of early modern Ireland as ‘undoubtedly the most outstanding of his generation’, Quinn has not been fully recognised elsewhere.

The late Syliva Turner wrote for Offaly History Blog:

David Beers Quinn’s father, also named David, was a member of the Church of Ireland from Tyrone, He was employed as a gardener at the Goodbody house, Inchmore. Quinn’s parents came to realise that their son was gifted. Finding good Protestant Irish education for a child from a working-class family was almost impossible if they stayed in rural ‘Southern Ireland’. The family moved to Belfast in 1922 where his father gained employment and in 1923 Quinn was able to attend the prestigious Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He continued his studies as an undergraduate at Queen’s University, Belfast between 1927 and 1931.

Quinn’s obituary in the Irish Times at the time of his death in April 2002 suggests his initial interest in the history of colonisation may have derived from his childhood years in Clara. He came from a Church of Ireland ‘colony’ within a ‘colony’ of the Quaker Goodbody family set inside a predominantly Catholic town. In 1998 Quinn wrote an affectionate account of his childhood years growing up there, explaining the relationships between different sectors of the community.